.U55 




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 


1920 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 


Copy ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M 


i U^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^l 


ip::' 'i i^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 


|jifj;7!:; 




■ 1 ^' 


I'll 




.||;^ 




» "HII^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 


'liilll^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^l 


Ifli' 







; ^ 


k. 



(I 111 ii:ii f 111 




^ 




CQBQRIGHT D£POSm 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



Manhattan, O City, 
You I sing — 
This song, for you! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



BY 

LOUISE MALLINCKRODT KUEFFNER 

n 

ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS FURLONG 




THE MODERNIST PRESS 

NEW YORK CITY 
1920 






Copyright, 1920, by Louise Mallinckrodt Kueffner. 



A Continent's Outpost, The Citadel, and Midsummer Storm, 
ar» adapted translations from a poem, Manhattan, by Kmil 
Reeck. 



§)CU604353 



NOV 1 1 1920 



^Ki» I 



3 



CONTENTS 

Page 

A Continent's Outpost 7 

The Citadel 9 

The Island's Round 10 

Strolls 14 

The Village 22 

Learning's Hill 25 

With the Obelisk at Sunrise 29 

Night Hunger 32 

Autumn's Hope 34 

Welcoming the Young Year 36 

Flowerday Before Easter 39 

Sunday Escape 41 

Summer's Green Refuge 43 

Midsummer Storm 46 

SUMMERMOON SyMPHONICS 48 

Crowds and Faces 53 

Our Tower's Beckoning Signal 57 

My Song's Farewell 59 



A CONTINENT'S OUTPOST 

Manhattan, 
City— 

A lynx, crouched forward, 

You lie at watch on the threshold 

Of the new world. 

You stretch out grasping claws 

Around bulged flanks 

Of nearing ships, 

And the flanks quiver; 

Thus you gather in your proud cargoes. 

You are the portal 

Through which they go 

Who are dead to the old world. 

In your building-mazes 
Frost-nipped blood congeals. 
Yet sometimes, bursting, 
It flares up in grotesque madness. 
Wills life. 



8 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

But then sinks back into night, 
Is docile again. 

November-pale are men 

Within your reaches, 

Manhattan, 

For you are 

Fear, millionfold, immeasurable 

Fear! 

Ever bolder 

You throw steel arches, stone beams 

Across yawning clefts; fear not: 

The continent lets not go of you! 

No ! never will he leave you to the seas ; 

His hungry clutch holds you 

Close ; 

He needs you! 

So vault your bridges 

Over his rivers, 

With tunnels gird yourself to the mainland, 

Calmly, 

Manhattan 

O City! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



THE CITADEL 

Manhattan, 

Closeknotted knob of gaping valleys, waterways, 

park! 
Deep into dark earth 
Your teeming life 
You send down; 

And into high air ;- 

Towers you lift 
Carrying up life. 

Dizzy-deep abysses are the streets of your citadel, 

Island, 
Where a sunblind world 
Knows only lucre, braying, and haste! 
Here barter 
Masters men; 
Usury, 

Hard outbargaining. 
And a whole land bows to you. 
City, 

Keen-witted outbargainer, 
O Manhattan ! 



10 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



THE ISLAND'S ROUND 

Manhattan, 

Vibrating City, 

Who have begun to disclose to me your million- 
foldness, 

Now I stagger. Where is your unity, 

Monstrous City? 

I know your great buildings, each is a town self- 
centred, where you spend workheavy days 
high up in the air, and down, down in earth's 
darkness ; 

Your slums and Riversides and universities are 
worlds sundered, what bridge will ever con- 
nect these ? 

You wreck palaces for a whim, and preserve tumble- 
down tenements reeking, renting them out 
to men; 

your transcendent wealth eludes all but a few, 

city of greed! 
(The misery of your poor, how stupendous, the 

happiness of your rich, how uncertain!) 
City, amorphous city, 

1 am lost in your maze. 

You terrify me, O monstrous City ! 
How can I believe in you, 
Manhattan ? 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 11 

But, City, I will not let you master me : 

And see, now in a few hours I have sailed all around 

you; 
You are not so ungraspable after all — 
Now I have seen the whole of your long narrow 
body, held round by your rivers; your eager 
towns close-clustering about you, bridges and 
tubes holding you fast to them; and I have 
followed from end to end the sweeping lines 
of your ridges. 
The vague mass of you no longer eludes me. 

Your eastern side is your back yard; here are end- 
less dumping-barges where men handle the 
City's ill-smelling refuse day after day, un- 
loading it out of wagons, shoveling it into the 
water. 

Here, too, are the buildings where your broken ones 
come to you sick in body and soul; 

(And now we pass the islands where you hide from 
us your criminals and your maddened ones, 
O I will not look at these islands, surely, 
O city, some day your life will become free 
of these!) 

Here, also, are your many begrimed coal-barges, 
where white men work themselves black, 
(but see, on the cabin's roof there, a pink 
geranium is blooming.) 



12 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

(O must It be, this underworld Hell? 
That some of us may live, 
Praising glad skies with uplifted face, 
While we forget, forget?) 

But now at last we have turned into your smaller 
River and into the Canal that leads us to the 
f ree-souled River of your front side, O City, 
O Joy— 

Green hillsides refresh us, and on a reef sprawling 
into your coolness, broad-breasted River, 
white-limbed bathers exult. 

And now the ridge-line of your apartment-blocks 
and towers billows in unbroken sweep toward 
your citadel, and descends abruptly into the 
sea. 

The separated buildings have grouped themselves 
together, and out of your bluish-gray vapor 
that thins upward into clear sky, 

Your solid Reality, 

O City, 

Transformed, 

Dreams itself into our blood 

Sun-quivering 

Yet haze-softened, 

A vision of delicate Joy ! 

A unity now, nature's work — though man's — 

Her dream, her transcendent flower, 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 13 

ACity of Souls! 

City, never can I deny your evil — 
And yet, and yet, 

1 believe forever 
In your Beauty 
And in you, 

O social 
City. 



14 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



STROLLS 

Joy is in my heart, 

Manhattan, 

When I stroll 

From Plaza to Washington Square 

Down your proud Avenue. 

Palaces 

Bring dreams, fleeting. 

Of Moorish night, of Italian days; 

But soon shops 

With bright windows 

Offer feasts 

To my eyes 

My hungry, happy eyes. 

Flowers from far climes greet me, 

Flowers from the country. 

And flowers grown large and rare 

Through man's cherishing. 

Here the Orient's treasures 

Of rugs and vases, carvings and jewels call. 

And now confections beckon: 

Overgarments curiously fashioned into ever different 

shapes ; 
Undergarments delicate dreams of silks and laces 

and frills; 
And fabrics, just fabrics, 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 15 

Velvets and silks, all textures and shades, 

Yellows and blues, oranges, purples, greens, and 

reds — 
O happy happy eyes 

That can turn away from the drab of streets 
To this world of desire, 
My City! 

But now I come to a gray wedge-tower 
That stands where your rival crosses you, Avenue, 
And there, where another fairer tower 
Looks down on a green space. 
Soap-box speakers declaim. 
Treasure them. City, speak they foul or fair: 
For here is the germ and promise 
Of your Freedom, City! 
Yet I follow you on. Avenue, 
To where you pass under the arch 
To your fountain 
In Washington Square. 
O fountain 
Symbol forever 
Of your freshness of life 
Your circulating life 
Dear City! 

But 

When I come 

O City 



16 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

To where your furrowed steel tracks tremble along 
the ground; 

And the bold brutal bray of autos breaks into one*s 
soul; 

Where stairways climb up, dig down 

To trains, trains bellowing, shrieking. 

Trains incessant, filled ever, spewing out men, 
swallowing men. 

Here 

O City 

My laughter 

Dies always; 

And when I pass through the streets of your slums, 

Streets sombre and sordid, between tenements crum- 
bling, reeking; 

Streets teeming, 

Where pushcarts offer unbeautiful cargoes. 

Stockings, cravats, and shoestrings; tidies, ribbons, 
and laces; candies, pickles, dried fish: 

Things tawdry, or crude, or unwholesome ; 

And O when I pass the room light-glaring, bare, 

Where men and women sit homeless, packed close, 
through the long night's hours, 

Sprawling on chairs, on the floor, 

Dozing 

Head-heavy — 

When I hear this, 

When I see this, 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 17 



Sad City 
Hard City— 
Within me 
My laughter 
Dies — 
O strange City — 

Down from your uptowering Pride, 

City, 

1 look, at sunny noon, upon the wriggling 
Whitespecked black mass 

Nervous with life, each little life, 

So far below. 

Then I plunge into Broadway's swirl myself. 

I am drawn into Liberty Street's narrow cleft, into 
the cool shaded darkness there; 

I cross black streams that rush madly toward the 
nation's gambling-whirl ; 

And I emerge suddenly out of the dark, the citadel's 
dark, the dark of the last sky-seeking sen- 
tinels — 

For here, where two streets flow eastward together, 
are breadth, and openness, and time — 

Low tumbledown houses of long ago loiter down to 
the River's docks: 

And would you believe it? Here, where the win- 
dows are grimiest, a windowbox sends up 
green to the sky! 



18 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

A big ship's lure has brought me to the River. O 
different world! Where are hurry and roar? 

A man's world : the women you meet you can count 
on one hand. 

Here is the seaman's easy unhurried swing and his 
friendly surfeit of time. 

He sees you stop and look about; at once his bored 
eyes brighten. Which car is it you want? 
will you not come and finish your walk 
with him? have something to eat, come to 
a picture-show — he tries all his lures, and the 
clustered loiterers look on interested — he's a 
Socialist, off to-morrow for Italy, don't you 
want to have a talk with a seaman ? 

But, since you really will leave him, he'll go for a 
sleep in the seamen's home — 

(O hunger, great is your hunger, lonely City. ) 

In a moment I am back in Broadway's rumbling un- 
sociable swirl — 

But there, O see the gay fruit-stands — 

And that man selling toy canaries, whistling their 
shrill trill into the roar — 

Not even here, 

O busiest City, 

Has man forgotten his play. - " 

And his dream's song! 

When Nig^i^ 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 19 

Hoping to still your blood's tingling, 

Falls upon you, 

City, 

You flash forth defiance. 

Before you can say : Let there be light ! 

— Light is! Light, light! 

Dazed, forgetting the traffic, 

Heeding not, hearing not 

Policemen's whistles, 

I stumble forward 

Into your golden 

Circle of magic 

Times Square! 

There, high up, a kitten plays with a spool of red 
silk, 

Entangles itself, lands on its back, wiggles its tail. 

Gets on its feet; and no wiser, begins again 

The same sport, hour after hour, night after night. 

Here light-sprites brighten into life. 

Swing and bend arms and legs, salute, vanish ; 

While the fountains on either side pearl into light- 
drops 

Unceasingly. 

O, there — 

Golden cupids hold high 

A redrose garland 

With silver swing — 

A silver lady, tossing long silver hair, 



20 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

Swings 

Up — down-up, down-up — 

O glad Lady Life — 

Swing on ! 

O lusty Lady Life, 

So I too 

Swing 

Forever — 

Up- 

Down — up — 

Down — 

Back up— 

Forever 

Up! 

But ah, where the deathless butterfly hovers over its 

pink rose, 
Drinking light-honey, sated never — 

here I linger, 

With this image of life-lovers, poets, 
In your fairyland world, 
Poet-City! 

Theatres are over, even the midnight frolics, and 
cafes are closed. 

1 pass through the great park. 

The City's jewel-bespangled dress still flashes, 

But the gems blink dimly through the softcnin.rr h.ize. 

Then sleep kisses them into darkness. 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 21 

The haze weaves its spell upon the C/ty: 

Her unharmonized contrasts 

Have found their healer. 

She takes her brief rest. ' .Z' 

But the lights above '{ , 

In the deep sky 

Shine on. 

The world has found them again: 

They glisten 

While you sleep 

Dream-City! 



22 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



THE VILLAGE 

Manhattan, 

City of Death, and of Life, 

Of fear and of faith — 

Of tongues, of creeds, 

Of worlds within worlds — \ 

Tolerant, social, intense, aspiring, 

I love you, eager City! 

Down here in your lowland. 

In your Village, the oldest of your worlds, 

Sappocanican, 

(Gitche Manitou's outpost 

Of his continent's 

Happy 

Hunting-grounds) , 

I, your lover, your singer. 

In my Cavern's long corridor close to the teeming 

soil, held round by walls and walls, gloat 

gleefully : 
Pulsing your life, 
Your millionf old bloodbeat of man to man ! 

The Village is you in small. 
Here are worlds within worlds. 



MOODS OP MANHATTAN 23 

This IS no rectangular city ; 

Single names follow streets around corners, 

And streets, once parallel, run right into one another. 

High clean modern apartment buildings look down 

On cosy old brick houses of few stories, 

And on besmutched walkup tenements 

Where hordes of rough children 

Play and brawl on the dirty street. 

Along the Great River, opposite docks and piers, 

saloons call at every step; 
Men and women loaf their souls away, they heed 

not 
The beckoning freedom of the river's wide view. 

Your Italian world teems exuberant — 
Dirt, children, vendors, musicians ; 
But close to a playground once a cemetery 
A Library offers refuge from too much life. 

And here in your heart, 

Mushroom cafes gay and grotesque 

Offer light, offer life, 

And discussion, 

To youth that has not found itself. 

To dreamers, 

To the homeless, the restless, the eager, the seeking — 

Men are happy in soft collars and bright ties; 



24 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

Women are happy in loose tunics and hair bobbed- 
They talk and dream and dance and love — 

Village of unharmonized contrasts, 
Thus sounds your slogan : 
Live, and let live! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 25 



LEARNING'S HILL 

Glad and free beats my uplifted heart 
When out of the subway's dark brutal roar 
I find myself before your fountains, Columbia, gra- 
cious mother, 
Mother gracious to those who come to you for 

learning's life! 
Freed is my soul of hardness and soil 
As I step up the broad approach to your pillar- 
fronted dome. 

Stately, serene is this dome that harbors your books 
of men. 

Though it is lower than the study-buildings, cluster- 
ing about it amid the green, 

And lower far than the upscraping apartment-build- 
ings beyond these — 

Yet it is vaster than they. 

Set on the hill with its soul-freeing view, the pillars 
and dome bring dreams to us here of old 
Greek and Roman dreams, 

Dreams that we need, of breadth, and detachment, 
and harmony's calm, and our Mind's undy- 
ing joys. 

Surely serenity dwells here, and devotion to learn- 
ing's cause. 



26 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

Yet is it so? 

I wonder — I look at the men and women that I see 
here, and I listen to the words they speak. 

These men and women I see do not look soiled or 
untidy or over-colored ; 

Fresh young men ; girls neatly dressed ; no one is 
boisterous or loud. 

And yes, there are older faces, men, and women, 
many women, lined faces, and heads not up- 
raised. Well-mannered, quiet-voiced, they 
loiter or hasten by, intent. 

No, this is not buoyancy ; eyes do not sparkle ; voices 
do not ring with enthusiasm, enthusiasm — 
why not? why not? 

For here are those who are free to study, free to 
explore and to dream with the world's earn- 
est prophets. Hunger is not their scourge, 
and the day's long drudgery not their dulling 
master. 



But listen to these two women, gentle, attractive, 
one young, and one older — ''points," 
"points," this is the word that strikes the ear; 
all their words cluster around this one, spoken 
again and again; (curious, are ''points" the 
spur and reward for study, here?) 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 27 

Over there are two men and a woman on a bench; 
I linger here, too, pretending to read a book. 
She: "He was the most illuminating and 
honest Professor I ever had. It's a pity he 
had to leave." The younger man: ''Well, I 
guess he shattered too many hometown illu- 
sions. Of course the other Professors aren't 
so interesting, but one has to have a degree. 
So we keep on coming, don't we?" She: 
*'Well, when I have ?ny degree I shall study 
for pure joy anywhere." The older man: "O 
pshaw, what's the use of working oneself 
tired over those old facts anyway. I am tired 
of it all. I wonder whether I shall really get 
a better salary when I have my degree." I 
continue my walk. 

Here is a group of young men. **Hurrah," one 
shouts, tosses a book up in the air and catches 
it; "I passed my exam, boys; goodbye old 
book, I'm glad I'm through with you." 

And now I catch up with a young man and a young 
girl who look interested in each other, I 
hear her warm voice, *'You must read 
Hegel's Philosophy of History and Croce's 
book on Hegel. That Hegelian solution of 
opposites is great. What he says about the 
antithesis of good and evil, and the higher 
synthesis, is wonderful. It connects with life, 



28 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

too, and makes one understand things better." 
He: ''Which Professor recommended the 
books? Is his course interesting?'' She: "O, 
I found them when I was browsing about 
in the Library. But our history Professor 
did mention Hegel, and he had the books put 
on the reserve shelf. O, I just love to 
browse in the Library." I pass on. 

After all, gracious mother, Columbia, learning's 

mother, you are Life's mother in truth, for 

those that seek! 
And when I find myself again by your fountains, 

and step down your hill back to the subway's 

roaring dark, 
I carry within me the vision of your dome, stately, 

serene, this dome that harbors the records of 

men's throbbing minds, 
Records electric to those who are electric; and who 

know 
That Learning and Life are not foes, but bosom 

friends, 
Forever! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 29 



WITH THE OBELISK AT SUNRISE 

Manhattan, 

City of the Present, 

Who reach so avidly 

For the future, and the new. 

Yet you do not forget 

The old: 

In your Park your great Museum is full of things 

vital, once, to ages that have passed: 
Here you connect with the dead and make their 

dreams vital again for yourself. 

You have loved above all, I think, the world's old 

wonderland of the Nile, its riddle, the lore 

of its temples and tombs; 
Rich are your Egyptian rooms; but the greatest of 

all its symbols of life 
You have placed outside your walls, in the free air, 

where it belongs. 
Here it stands alone, the brown obelisk, on its stone 

platform raised, this greeting from the old 

old world to the new, 
This greeting from Egypt to you, America, through 

your City, Manhattan! 
Here in this land of fogs it is touched by the rising 

sun's rays 



30 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

Even as it was touched so long ago in that brown 

desert-land with its unfailing sun, 
Man's ever-returning god ! 

Here by the obelisk I stand, it is Spring; I am wait- 
ing with the obelisk to greet you, my Beloved, 
O my father Sun! 

The city's roar is asleep; and in the stillness your 
infinite golden hands reach up into the gray, 
and you come, golden ball: 

You touch gladdened leaves all over the park; you 
touch the robin that hops about on the plat- 
form, and he chirps up; and you touch me; 

But first of all you have touched the obelisk where 
it stands slender and straight, this symbol of 
your creating Life. 

O Sun, are you indeed the reviving sun? but what, 
what are you : a beetle rolling his golden egg 
from the East — 

A falcon with wide wings outspread — a bull, or a 
hawk? or an all-seeing Eye? 

A god sailing fleetly in your golden barque? 

Or just a great disk with myriad loving hands to lay 
upon men, all men? 

Or are you the goldglowing Rose of the World ? 

O, you are all these — one sun — yet different for 
each dreamer — 



-HB 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 31 

But life for all! 

So I greet you Sun, and I greet you, City, 

Beginning anew, 

O Sun, 

And O Sun-gladdened City, 

Your cycles ever-recurrent, 

Of life, of life! 

For, listen: 

The Day*s young Hunger has opened its mouth. 
It is whistling, braying for its food, its more than 

food. 
Demanding its dues, (why not?) 
Of you, 
O mother City ! 



32 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



NIGHT HUNGER 

The day's occupations done, 

Thousands and thousands 

Of workers, 

Of loafers, 

Turn themselves loose upon life. 

Has any city more eating-places? 

Does anyone eat at home? 

Dignified hotel restaurant, light-dimmed cabaret 

with music and dancing, basement table 

d'hote, cafeteria, automat, 
Which will you have? 
And which cookery calls you to-night? 
French or Italian, Chinese, Turkish, Hungarian? or 

just plain American? 
Eat and enjoy ! 

Having eaten, which show will you choose? 

Theatre, opera, movie, vaudeville, concert? 

Does cosmopolitan Broadway entice you? or Four- 
teenth Street, the humbler man's wonder- 
land? or the never-weary Yiddish world, 
Second Avenue? 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 33 



Or will you go to a lecture? a mass-meeting, a 

studio-talk ? 
What city has more lectures, more night-schools? 
Hither ever more thousands, 
Hunger-driven, by body-hunger, by soul-hunger, 
Come for the wisdom 
That is magic! 

Or shall we go to the Library's great reading-room ? 
Here the living, silent, eager, learn from those 
That are dead; but the dead are not dead. 
And with the living their spirits go forth 
Into your life, O sociable City! 

City of wealth, 
Triumphant you lure us all; 
Untiringly you pour gifts 
Out of your great cornucopia, 
Prodigal City; 
And we worship you. 
City of Promise. 



34 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



AUTUMN^S HOPE 

Grayness has held us round, yet the City's life 
throbs ; 

Its year has begun! 

Autumn's red world, without, we have left. 

O gray birds that haunch yourselves upon the gray 
tower there^ — 

You are my souFs birds haunched here amid hun- 
ger and pain, 

Forgetting the dream of southlands — and flight — 

For richer than cloversweet fields are men's hopeful 
hearts, 

And this is the City's 

Season of hope ! 

See how the young of the land flock hither, fled 
from small town's thraldom or family's over- 
close care! 

Schools open, lectures and concerts begin, the pub- 
lic forums in Churches discuss problems of 
the day, painting and sculpture exhibit 
dreams of color and form, nevv magazines 
plan to reform the world — - 

And poets find poetry 

Everywhere — 

Everywhere they live it^ 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 35 

The City's new work, new freedom, new life! 

And these are the moving-days — 
Happiness-seeking multitudes feather new nests — 

surely here it will come to us, they dream, 
Let us forget the trial, the failure, the gloom we 

have known in the old — 
Let us sing! 

O see the swinging arms, the buoyant walk 

In the crisp air— 

The City's hope is aflame, 

Its year has begun. 



36 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



WELCOMING THE YOUNG YEAR 

City, how old and gray you look during these last 

days! 
Your gray trees reach bare branches up into a gray 

sky, 
And your lights hide blinking behind gray veils. 
Why do you not wear your white winter dress? 
Snow, have you decided to scorn the City that 

treads you into slush, and dumps you av/ay? 
Only a few tantalizing flurries you have sent us, a 

moment's brightening of the city's drab, a 

moment's whirling into frolic and joy. 

Drab and heavy have been these last days; but now, 
once more the million-hearted City has been 
expectant like a little child ; 

For at midnight it is going to shed its old husk, and 
come forth renewed! 

Tonight the Old Year grows young again! 

For hours the bands have been playing in the 
Squares; the million-hearted streets have 
throbbed ; 

And now the magic moment has come : 

The newborn lusty-lunged giant-child whistles 
forth her long-sustained shrill notes and deep 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 37 



notes — 
For an instant lights go out, and shine forth again 

exuberant ; 
Then the million-souled throng throws confetti and 

toots horns braying and roaring, 
And they call out to one another the old glad hope, 

Happy New Year, Happy New Year! 

For each this is a word of might ; 

O Joy, to begin all over again, 

Our plans, our resolutions, our hopes! 

( Happiness, O this year you will surely come to me ; 

Success — this year I will certainly show you what I 

can do ; 
O this year I will unfailingly rid myself of my 

faults!) 
Even the homeless throb with your joy tonight, 
City renewed! 

Nor is the air now heavy and gray, 

For the snov/ has begun to fall in great soft madly- 
whirling flakes. 

Like children the happy crowds shout, catch the 
flakes in their hands and in their mouths, 
and let them melt on cheeks and eyes; 

Faster and merrier they push themselves down the 
long streets. 

Ah City, you are going to have your white winter 



38 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

dress; 
The Snow, your godmother, has brought you a 

token 
For your new Lifers beginning — 
White Purity's birthday gift ! ^ 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 39 



FLOWERDAY BEFORE EASTER 

The heralds have come; 

High-traveling sunball, white-fleecy blue, clear-lam- 
bent air! 
They have lured the crowds to the streets. 

O, the Spring is everybody's lover. 

City or country, what does he care? 

He's bound to make everything blossom, flowers 

and men. 
For he loves them! He smiles upon them, caresses 

them, warms them — 
And they unfold ! 

The preoccupied city crowds forget business 
And sun themselves into smiles. 

Huge several-tiered wagons unload upon the Square 
The countryside's Easter gift to you, City; 
And the gray Square changes its hue. 
Hyacinths white, blue, and pink — tulips aflame — 

goldbright daffodils — 
And roses, roses, roses. 

Wide-open large-petaled roses on sturdy stalks — 
Closefolded little pink climbing roses — 
And lovely rambler running up a high pole, shower- 
ing tiny-petaled red blossoms upon a wire- 



40 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

work disk, dropping through it delicate danc- 
ing shadows down upon the sidewalk — 

And there, O the ever-appealing tender pansy-faces ! 

Gay-blossoming Square, to you also 

The Magician has come. 

The city crowds loaf gaping. 

Some carry away with them, proudly, a token, a 

gift-plant ; 
Others just gaze; (why do they not buy, I wonder?) 
And did they ever watch them grow, do you think, 

in country gardens, around homes? 
But see, one of the men who sell the flowers, has 

picked up a skyblue lilac-spike; 
He looks around and gives it, no not to me, but to 

the girl standing there ; 
Not a beautiful girl, not a girl with dreams in her 

eyes — 
But now she smiles — ah. Spring is her lover too ! 
I wonder what made the flowerman give the flower 

to her? 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 41 



SUNDAY ESCAPE 

The subways to the Bronx are full, even early; 

I too have come out of sunblue day into cavernous 

dark, and am brain-jolted into noddiness — 
And I too, at last, go forth again ; 
Reborn into sunblue day, into sungreen day. 

Here is the garden of animals. 

I see monkeys swing one another by their long tails, 
or scratch thoughtful brows ; 

I receive from gay birds brilliant brightness brought 
from all the world ; 

And I smile at the drab, heavy elephant, who has 
grown his questing nose downward, into a 
ground-groveling trunk; I smile also at the 
giraffe, whose sky-reaching neck lifts his little 
head into disdainful upper air — (O material- 
ist, O phantast, can you be friends, I won- 
der?) 

Now I cross a road where autos wheel and wheel 
and wheel, out for their giddying mile upon 
mile ; 

O how glad I am, not to be off with them — 

O how glad I am 

That I may stand here rapt. 

As now, 



42 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

B)^ the dark pointed junipertree, 

Bathing my eyes in the swan-pond's, the frog-pond's 

Opalescene, 

While the trees, doubling themselves, dip leafy 

heads into coolness, 
And the swans, snowy sailers, strike forth tracks 

that widen and widen- 
As my thoughts widen, lost, lost 
In life's widening richness. 

I wander on till I come to the Japanese cherrytrees ; 
here a young Japanese father is photograph- 
ing a dainty wife with baby-son, white- 
haloed amid downlooking blossomcups. 

Now, near sunset, I am back at the subway, among 
crowds of gay children glad of golden and 
red balloons, of bright-whirling paper wind- 
mills, and of icecream cones. 

How good taste my fried frankfurter and crisp 
beer, my doughnuts and coffee! 

But see, over there a green parrot picks out envelope- 
fortunes for love-eager girls, and young 
men — 

Life, joy-promising witch, unweary, 

1 bow before you, 
O generous 
All-Giver! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 43 



SUMMER^S GREEN REFUGE 

Stone-city men have called you, 

Manhattan? 

But I, your lover, I do not see you thus; 

And now, for your sun-stagnant 

Reeling 

Everbright days, 

Let me sing my song 

Of your refuge, 

O green-tufted City! 

And first I will celebrate your great Park, your Riv- 
erside, your smaller parks, and your tree- 
grown Squares ; 

They are ever-ready playgrounds for all, and they 
throw greetings to us as we race down busy 
streets. 

Some of your little parks, aristocratic city, you keep 
locked up for a few, yet they give gay-green 
joy to us ; 

While other spots, O careful city, you have barred 
to all that none may be barred: you give 
them not to feet, but to eyes where eyes need 
them most. 

When I least expect it, oldfashioned city, you give 
glimpses of gardens, of green old graveyards 



44 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



shut in between sky-eager dwellings; 
And then you open up visions of fountains and flow- 
ers in courts, and on roof-gardens, yowi 
dreams of romance, newfashioned city. 

Your florists' windows, your displays of fresh vege- 
tables, your f ruitstands — let me not forget 
these: do they not cheer us everywhere? 

And always, O inexhaustible city, I can see grass- 
plots on sidewalks, or trees, or tufts of deter- 
mined green life sprouting up along curbs, 
or betVi^een stones, anywhere! 

Or I can see land of the landless, a windowbox, a 
flowerpot, a tincan ! There I saw, once, pan- 
sies abloom and a golden canary trilling forth 
his exuberance; and once I saw morning- 
glories open pink chalices to the sun, where 
houses are grimiest, climbing skywards from 
window to window. 

Can the country give joy like this? 

For into these flowers has gone man's heart-nourisned 
need 

Of that world which he feels — O far off — was his 
mother, once! 

And some day his upspringing love will bring her 
back to him more and more, back to his 

City of Souls! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 45 



So let them not call my city stone-city ; 

Let them open their eyes, and their hearts — 

And let them find your green refuge 

Everywhere, 

O my sun-radiant City! 



46 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



MIDSUMMER STORM 

Behind the gates, the ridged cliffs 

Of the Great River's palisades, 

Glares and glowers 

Gitche Manitou, 

The Great Spirit 

Of a continent's 

Happy hunting-grounds. 

The White Man 

From his cloud-reaching residences 

On the Island 

Along the River's shore, 

Smiles back 

Scornfully, calmly. 

But Gitche Manitou 
Blazes down upon the 
White Island Fortress, 
From which the White Man 
Drove the green forest, 
The Red Man. 

And now vapor. 
Heavy, scorched. 
Smudges from the stone boxes, 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 47 

Wilts to the ground 

The bold white invaders. 

Smoke-black, 

Sulphur-yellow, 

Clouds 

Ball themselves 

Fearfully. 

The Great Spirit flashes and growls 

And sends down torrents of wild tears. 

Driving before him 

The mad White Men. 

But soon his strength 

Passes from him. 

And the skyscrapers, uptowering. 

Cut clean into the blue sky. 

The White Man 

Smiles 

Calmly, 

— Thanking — 

The Great Spirit 

(O helpless Spirit!) 

For the cleared fresh air, 

And for life 

Renewed. 



48 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 



SUMMERMOON SYMPHONICS 

Tonight the full moon will rise upon the City. 
O moon, how often I have watched you lift yourself 

above hills, above the sea, changing from 

dusky red to gold, and to silver's keen calm! 
But O moon, held round and round by the city's 

high walls, how can I follow, tonight, from 

plane to plane, 
Your triumphant uprising. 
Your struggle away 
From haze-heavy earth 
To ether-clear sky? 

Dreamer, dreamer! 

Even now j^ou are jostled and stopped by throngs 

congested and brutal; 
For the masters* greed and t*he workers' need are 

struggling 
Fist to fist, 

While traction's traffic is stopped. 
Hunger is Master, 
He pulls the strings of man's Fate — 
O, the brute in us, • . 

The lust in us. 

The weariness in us, ' 

The unbelief in us, -. 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 49 

Are heavy, heavy. 

O man*s grim fight — 

The dull overpowering need, 

The external, the material, 

Are heavy, heavy. 

But listen — 

A faint sweet piping 

Arises from out of the din: 

A street musician 

Dreams 

Love — 

O so faintly! j 

Love, music, spirit — 

O the strife eternal 

Between man's Body 

And man's Spirit ! 

(Music, music is love: is it not 

Reconciliation 

Of separateness, 

Of dissonance? 

Then give me more 

Of music's harmonies.) 

Now I have come to the stadium and sit with a 
listening crowd on the stone steps of the 
theatre's open half-round: 

Above us the sky, and opposite — ah, the dusky red 



50 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

moon rising above the city's lights ! 

Beethoven's symphony: 

Insistent, the deep slow notes throw out 

The eternal theme 

Of Fate- 
Man's unescapable fate, the struggle of body and* 
soul 

Against the powers, the powers — without and 
within ! 

And ever the tender pleading for rest, for love, for 
joy! 

How beautiful life is, sings the master, how beau- 
tiful life is, 

If only we can forget its misery, if only we can use 
its pain — 

Fate, you cannot master me : 
Your hate I will turn into love! 
Brother-love, 

World-love! 

Come, I will dance with you, wildly, wildly ! 

I'll tussle you about, you helpless old bogey! 

1 mold you to my use forever. 

O life is joy, joy forever! f 

Joy triumphant, 

Joy! 

The symphony is over, and now we hear the 
uprightly turbulence of Weber's invitation to 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 51 

dance, and the ecstatic abandon of a waltz 
by Strauss — 

Man's spirit has grown light ; he dances into rhythm 
his life's blitheness. 

And opposite, see: the dusky red moon, rising, has 
turned to gold, and rising higher, has grown 
' into silvery joy. 

Through earth's haze-heaviness it has struggled tri- 
umphant; 

It pours down upon earth, upon men, 

Life's silvery blitheness, 

Love's silvery peace* 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 53 



CROWDS AND FACES 

The song of your crowds and faces, O Manhattan, 

Now I sing, 

The song of your eyes! 

Your eyes, are they not the gauge of your 

Life triumphant, 

Your joy, your love, and your hunger? 

The night has ended, and a bright early hour sees 
me swinging along full of the work I am 
going to do today ; it is my Joy ! 

But suddenly my soul has gone from me, for I am 
caught in the crowds shuttling themselves 
over from subway to subway; 

O the mad zigzagging, darting, bumping pushing, 
whirling! Is this your preparation for your 
day*s work, Manhattan? 

This motion-madness, and then the dumb inertness, 
the stifling huddled patience of the train- 
traveling millions? 

Faces wearied, worried ; eyes unvisioned, unsparklinj^ 
— is this your gift to morning's joy. 

City unhuman, too human ? 

Those black streams rushing toward the nation's 
gambling-whirl down town, all day they keep 



54 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

moving. Here gain and greed are gods. 
O men, and women, I try to read your faces; but 
they are blank; your pale intentness is with- 
out soul, it does not move me, and quickly 
I leave you. 

Now I am on First Avenue, where cart upon cart 

spreads out vegetables and fruits under 

yellow-and-gray umbrellas ; 
Here are ample women, bareheaded, aproned; and 

many many children; and bearded old men. 
They jostle along slowly: admiring, testing, buying, 

gossiping, eating! 

When the Tower in Madison Square sings out 
noon's fulness, the Avenue sends forth its 
sweatshop for an hour's freshness. 

Pushcarts with bright fruit have wheeled up, while 
blind and crippled musicians pipe up strange 
airs on strange instruments. 

From the sidewalks the crowds surge over onto the 
streets. Yet the current that moves them is 
leisurely: they joke, or talk earnestly, or 
flirt, or eat, or just sun themselves. 

Girls brightly dressed and painted giggle in groups. 
Other groups collect about speakers, they 
listen intently, or ask questions, or discuss 
ardently. 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 55 

This is an hour of unstrenuous sociable eyes : always 
it is true, Manhattan, that your poorest pluck 
gladness out of mere air ! For each this hour 
is fruitful. 

Now it is night, and joy overflowing lights up 
Broadway's theatre-blocks. The day's strain 
has relaxed its hold. 

Bright and radiant we rush for the show that is 
waiting to add more joy to our evening: faces 
are fond and glad, and eyes sparkle. 

But, Broadway, your sparkling joy pales when I 
remember the children I have seen in Cen- 
tral Park on Sunday afternoons! Gay won- 
dering flowers they dotted the great green, 
jumped and danced, flew kites, and sailed toy 
ships on the pond ! 

What joy is like the joy of their eyes, the promise 
of their eyes, the confidence of their eyes, 

The love of their eyes? 

O City, this is indeed the quintessence of your life ! 

But no, City, now in a moment I see before me the 
crowds of your mass meetings; and lighted 
eyes more wonderful than sweet children's 
eyes. 

When speakers, here, dream for hours of a new 



56 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

world's freedom, of love, of justice and joy 
for all- 
Then voices ring out approval; and I see in these 
eyes, these patient eyes, 

A fervor, a faith 

That reveals, 

O Manhattan, 

Your true Soul, 

City of Hope! 



i^\ 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 57 



OUR TOWER'S BECKONING SIGNAL 

O Night, black night, almighty night, 

Without moon, without stars, 

Lying so low and so dark upon the City, 

Do you wish to strangle its life? 

But no, you are not almighty 

Now the City is your conqueror ; 

For see, its lights sparkle up— stars created by man*s 

might more countless than the countless stars 

you are hiding from us; 
They throw their brightness upon your breast and 

take from us our dark terror. 
And far up, beyond the more than fifty unlighted 

stories, the gleaming tip of the City's high 

Tower, the quintessence of its electric life, 

its passionate will. 
Has throbbed into shining whiteness, a resplendent 

jewel for your black robe's adornment, a 

triumphant signal to seas and lands, 
O beckoning heart of my City ! 

Night, you cannot frighten me, for I myself am this 
Light ; Man's Light of body and soul. 

The electric Centre of your dark Womb. 

And now I am not down in the street, I am up 
there, myself our City's signal to the World ! 



58 MOODS OF MANHATTAN 

Beneath me the lights — O, the beautiful dance of 
these fireflies! (we all, we all, are such fire- 
flies)— 

Ah no, dark Mother, I do not fear you, 

For I and my City are your Soul, your Soul's dream 

of Life, 
Life opalescent, and free, and glad ! 

And O sparkling City of Souls, of electric Souls, 

Down there — 

•—So many lights ; yet one Light — 

Our joy it is, to worship the Light, 

And our joy it is, 

To liberate light, more light. 

And to send forth undimmed, 

O my City, 

Our farbeckoning signal 

To the World! 



MOODS OF MANHATTAN 59 



MY SONG'S FAREWELL 

Manhattan 
City of Life, 
To you I drink! 

City, O receiver of the hungry who are dead to old 

worlds, to unfreedom's constraint, 
City, great sea where souls are but drops, glad drops 
in your Life: 

free drops converging you for themselves ; 
glad drops merging themselves in your 
Life-of-All; 
City who are conflict, and conquest, keen former of 

men — 
Yourself your Centre, your own law, yet sending 

feelers 
Into every part of our World 
And into the Unscanned — - 



O be our 
Dream-Desire, 
Our City of Love! 



AFTERWORD 

O Reader — 

When you peruse these moods, 

Do not ask, I beg — 

Is it prose? is it verse? 

Realism — or idealism ? 

Description, narration, or lyric abandon : which is it, 

I wonder? 
O, where are the rules, the rules, 
Of beat, of pause, 
Of pointing? 
Of capitals? 

Friend 

Let me sing to you, merely. 

My joy — 

My joy in these moods 

These manifold moods 

Of our Mother 

Manhattan ! 

O Reader, 
Farewell — 
Until I hail you 

anew ! " 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIOM 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



